Mai woke up screaming, tears dribbling down her cheeks. She choked on her screams and started gagging. Her hysterical sobbing was punctuated with hiccups that wrecked havoc on her injuries. Oh God, I can still taste it. Oh God, I can't stand it. This was worse than anything her powers had ever shown her. She'd rather die than live through that again, she'd rather die than remember. Stomach acid burned at her throat as it escaped her mouth. She clenched her eyes shut, wishing Naru would come save her.

There was a cold laughter invading her senses like knives, filling the room with harsh, cruel glee. Mai, opened her eyes.

XXX

Naru's brain was working at a break-neck speed, flipping between piecing together the details of the case and finding his way to Mai. He stood in the same position, staring at the wall that Mai had passed through. He could hear the vague murmurs of Gene and Sara in the corner.

He realized that Mai had probably been targeted from the start, her sudden blindness had been deliberate and not a psychic reaction. Meaning that the thing that took her was playing with her.

Frustrated Naru took to looking around at the structure he was in. It was dark with walls made out of stones and a concrete floor. The room was maybe 15x15 feet and 8 feet high. There was a small adjoining room that looked to be a wine cellar. There were two windows that were around 5 inches high and 2 feet wide worked into the top of the wall; it let Naru hear the rain that decided to come down and obscure the light. Looking up Naru found a trap door leading upstairs, but it was missing the ladder. Standing at 5 foot 11 inches there was no way Naru could get himself out that way. He contemplated trying to hit it enough times to catch someone's attention but realized that he transported into a pocket dimension and had no idea if anyone would be able to hear him.

"Gene, is this converged point isolated or is it interactive with the other dimensions?" he finally asked. Naru did not even move his head, just shifted his eyes to look at his twin. There was a part of him that wanted have a reunion with Gene, and confide in him once again. But, Naru had to focus on Mai. She was alive and he was not going to risk her for someone who was dead. He wasn't sure he would risk her for someone alive either.

"I don't know. Have you tried returning the way you came?"

Naru shook his head and thought. It was an interesting idea, although he would prefer leaving the cellar in a more natural way (i.e. through a door) but things weren't working that way. "If the psychometry works in reverse I want you to try to hit the trap door for a while."

"You want to see how connected the dimensions are," Gene stated with a nod. He was sitting cross legged with Sara braiding her hair as she dozed in front of him.

"We also need to get Sara out, as well as investigate the wall Mai went through with proper tools," he replied. He stared at his twin and there was a jolt in his stomach when an idea struck him. He and Sara were solid and living in this space as well as Gene. What if he could walk out of the dimension into their reality? The chances were slim to none. Naru could easily pick apart the flaws in the idea. But, it remained to be proven impossible. If it worked, he could have his brother back.

"Alright, Noll. You better try it now," said Gene, not entirely oblivious to his brother's inner musings. He had the same flickering hope.

With a nod, Naru took the key and focused his energy.

There was a light and Naru found himself in the guy's room once more. He barely realized his success when Monk came in like a maelstrom.

The man's sandy hair looked windblown like he had been running and his eyes were glinting. "Naru! We heard a knocking sound and found a hidden trapdoor in the kitchen. Lin and John are trying to open it now."

Hurrying out of the room Naru and Monk entered the kitchen just as Lin pried open the trapdoor with a crowbar. There was a sharp intake of air as Lin looked down in. He was leaning over the edge, his knuckles white and his eyes wide and dilated.

"Gene?" Lin's voice was a mixture of disbelief, strangled joy and abstract horror. He was knelt down next to the door and continued to gape.

"Nice to see you too, Lin," said Gene cheekily. "Mind giving us a hand?" Lin in utter befuddlement reached his hand down, bracing himself with his other hand, towards Gene.

Instead of reaching for it, Gene lifted a little girl that Lin had failed to notice. Grabbing her wrist firmly and pulled her up gently with Gene shifting his grip on her to support her rising figure as much as possible. Once she was out Ayako took her aside to look her over.

Monk, aside Lin then pulled up Naru's twin. Both men stared at Gene in befuddlement once he was standing in the kitchen. Gene looked a couple of years younger than Naru and quite a bit more chipper. Lin couldn't help a stray thought towards the amount two years of growth had changed Naru. Glancing at the time effected twin Lin started his questions.

"How is Eugene alive?" his voice was slightly cracked with emotion.

"Trans-dimensional convergence," Naru replied concisely. Although he wanted to spend more time studying the phenomena, and perhaps write a thesis on it, he had other business to concentrate on. Before anyone could ask anything else Naru dropped down into the cellar and clicked on a LED flashlight that no one had seen him grab.

XXX

There was a light, that seemed painfully bright to Mai, but really was the faint glow of a candelabra. Squinting through the light Mai tried to take in her surroundings. She was laying of a black and gray marble floor that reflected the candle light and the moonlit rain pounding on the windows. There was a small puddle of her blood from where she had hit her head when she passed out. She was shivering, either from the cold or from shock.

Looking up she saw the most beautiful, ethereal face of a woman. She was inhumanly stunning. Her hair was long, wavy, and the color of stars that shifted hue as you stared, it was over one shoulder, hanging loosely over her breast; her nose was perfect with a long, slender bridge that let up to a her sharp brow, and a button nose. Her eyes were round, with a slight upturn at the edges, giving them a mischievous air, her irises were a reflective grey that caught the candle light. Her mouth was a perfect bow and redder then anything then Ayako had ever worn.

Mai stared at the beautiful woman before her. Her fear melted into oblivion for a stuttered minute as her thoughts struggled to catch up with her.

"I suppose I should introduce myself since you see me?" Her voice matched her appearance and it seemed as though a perfectly played violin was being bowed. "My name is Cailleach of the Tuatha De Danaan."

Mai's instincts were writhing, undulating like a great river after a hard rain. She recoiled in on herself, flinching away from Cailleach.

The movement did not go unnoticed and the sweet smile on Cailleach face flashed for a split second and her true face appeared. A wide smile with long, skinny pointed teeth glinted in the silvery light, eyebrows knotted and eyes narrowed, sinking into her skull, the perfect nose wrinkled and the silver eyes hardened into a steel.

She chuckled as her face retuned to it's previous beauty and lifting one long nailed finger she traced a line from the center of Mai's forehead, down her nose, ending at her chin.

"Did you enjoy the memory of my first meal, Mai?"

Mai whimpered as tears dripped on to the floor, mixing with the new blood falling from the line down her face.

Hey guys,

So, I meant to be prompter on updating this, but the end of April and the beginning of May has been hell. By hell I mean two of my rowers that I coach crashed into a bridge and the engine of my safety launch decided to cut out as I was going to rescue them and the river's current decided to sweep me right into the rowers in the water. By hell I mean that my pup, Max, got hit by a car and shattered his pelvis, and it seemed like there was a chance he could recover eventually. I got all of my hopes up because the vet let us take him home a whole hour earlier than they thought (if he could survive) because even though his pelvis was utterly destroyed and could puncture his organs, everything was going as well as they could have gone. He passed away the next morning without warning. My best friend and her very first boyfriend broke up and I couldn't even hug her because she was 8 hours away at her college. And my dear friend who was helping me through everything just moved 50+ hours away for the summer. By hell I mean, ALL of this happened during finals week and then I got sick from stress and slept for two days.

Sorry, you guys don't need to know so much about my life. But I've been needing to VENT every couple of days since everything started simmering down just to kill the pent up stress.

Sorry again, I hope you like this chapter even though it's a bit short.

~Rose